


“And you still came back to me.”

by 13atoms (2Atoms)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dark!13, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, my favourite 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:26:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27642736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2Atoms/pseuds/13atoms
Summary: Request: Hurt / Comfort for Dh!Master (ft. 13)
Relationships: The Master (Dhawan)/Reader
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31





	“And you still came back to me.”

“You don’t understand!” You screamed, “He loves me!”

“He doesn’t,” the Doctor snapped.

You struggled against her arms, grunting as she slapped a hand over your mouth.

You stopped trying to shout from the shock of her slender fingers, painfully hard against your face.

A silence fell over the TARDIS, even the ship herself stunned into silence, your words no doubt still ringing through the mechanics and endless corridors of the time ship.

You hadn’t been here in months, but she looked the same.

The Doctor’s spare arm was wrapped around your body as she tugged you further into the console room, refusing to let you go. You’d be bruised tomorrow from how she’d grabbed you, dragged you from The Master’s side and pulled you into the ship against your will.

You hadn’t even had time to scream, your heart breaking as he called your name in confusion, noticing you’d gone just a little too late.

The Doctor had already kidnapped you.

When she finally let you free from her arms The Doctor smacked a button on the console, and you heard the _thump_ of a lock turn. You would be locked in for as long as she wanted you trapped.

You glared up at the motionless eaves of the ship.

_Traitor_.

“This is for your own good,” she muttered, already starting to walk around the console.

You scoffed.

“He is a dangerous man,” The Doctor insisted.

She flipped the cover of a button up and down, fiddled with stabilisers, even as the ship was stationary in the ruins you and The Master had been exploring. As her fingers danced across the console, you recognised each button. He’d taught you. You knew she wasn’t piloting. She was distracting herself, avoiding meeting your eyes, seeing your anger and hatred.

“He wouldn’t _manhandle me_!” You spat.

She glared you down, but you didn’t miss the twitch of her mouth, or the flash of guilt as she looked down at her own hands.

“Wouldn’t he?” She challenged, looking up suddenly.

There was fire in her hazel eyes. Anger. It hurt to see that coming from her, a woman you had once been convinced wasn’t capable of _anger_. You knew different. Had sensed differently, with each adventure you shared with her.

You knew her dark side, just like you knew The Master’s.

“No. He wouldn’t. He respects my choices,” you jutted your chin out a little as you replied, knowing you sounded petulant.

So what? The Doctor was being even more childish.

“Even when they’re not good for you?”

“Even then! Because he loves me.”

“Does not,” she laughed, her voice bitter.

“He does!”

You could hear how you were squabbling, the TARDIS seeming to allow the echoes of your bickering to last a little too long. Maybe she was trying to send a message. Show the two of you something. 

You fumbled the locket around your neck, on the thin chain The Master had promised no one but you could break. He’d had it made the first time you told him you loved him, paid a fortune for it, and fiddled with it for hours. You never took it off.

The Doctor eyed the metal curiously, no doubt trying to make out the perfect circles of Gallifreyan inscribed across its heart shaped surface.

_A little cheesy,_ The Master had conceded as he slipped it around your neck, _but I think it gets the message across._

Just the thought of his glee at seeing the jewellery around your neck, the gentle peck to your forehead as you smiled back at him, was enough to make your cheeks heat up. And make you even more certain you didn’t want to be here. The Doctor wasn’t your home anymore.

“You don’t know him like I do.”

The Doctor’s tone was dark, as though she was _trying_ to sound haunted, haggard, to summon all of her years to the forefront and scare you.

It wouldn’t work.

After the things you’d seen, her little ghost stories were _nothing_. Being her companion had numbed you to her sanctimonious words. You knew they were hollow, no matter how much she tried to live by them.

“No. I know him better than you. You haven’t known him in years. All he ever wanted was your friendship, and you refused him.”

The Doctor was seething, doubling down, and she finally began to actually do something with the console. She stopped playing with the navigation dials and started to tap something into the screen. You backed towards the doors, certain you could find them locked, but unable to do anything about it.

When you shoved your shoulder roughly against the wooden panes, they didn’t budge. The Doctor froze on the spot at your pained grunt. Undeterred, you began to fiddle with the lock. The TARDIS began a low, warning hum, and The Doctor finally moved.

One foot in front of the other, she approached you, her nostrils flaring and a tendon in her neck flexing with a pure, unfettered rage she’d always tried to hide from her companions.

_They would leave if they saw it,_ you realised numbly. _That’s why she hides it. Her true anger._

“All he ever wanted was to _toy with me! Hurt me!_ ”

Her voice broke, her face barely inches from yours, and for a moment your stomach dropped as you took in her emotion.

The fine chain of The Master’s gifted necklace dug into your neck as you tugged anxiously at the locket, the familiar, smooth curve of its heart shape comforting you.

The Master would play with it too, sometimes, in bed as you woke up. You’d see him eyeing it as he made love to you, for smiling as you put it back on after a bath.

“Oh, so he’s not your _best mate_ anymore? Why is that, do you think?” You spat. “Why would he _possibly_ want to hurt you?”

She exhaled shakily, her blonde hair more unruly, less perfect as she glared at you. For the first time since she’d locked the doors, you were truly scared.

_Where was The Master?_ _Wasn’t he here yet?_

If it was within the realm of all possible things in the universe, you felt sure The Master would be here to rescue you.

_What had she done_?

“He tells you a few stories, _kisses you_ a bit, _lies_ , and that’s all it take for you to be his loyal servant?” The vitriol strengthened her accent for a moment, making the words drip honey-thick from her tongue as she mocked you.

“How could you? After the things he’s done to me?”

“And the things you’ve done to him?” You rebutted, your voice weaker than you’d like.

She was getting to you. All the love you’d once had for The Doctor, even just as her best mate, her loyal companion, was still locked away in your memories. Seeing her so unabashedly loathe you, try to humiliate you, after everything you’d been together made you ache.

You could feel this argument poisoning your fond memories together, tainting every happy moment with the bitterness you felt towards The Doctor now.

You’d left her company on good terms, admittedly concealing your relationship with The Master from her, but everything between the pair of you had been hugs and crying and promises to _‘text me, yeah?’._

The Doctor’s eyes were a little bloodshot, up close. You wondered how she’d found out about you and The Master. How long she’d been hunting you.

“You’ve done things to hurt him too,” you croaked.

“Like what?” The Doctor sounded pitchy, near breaking into _some_ emotion. But you couldn’t tell what it was.

She never showed you anything. No emotion, nothing of her true self.

Not like The Master would, cuddled on a sofa in his study, or on the fine linens of a bed stolen from a feudal society’s dethroned king, or on an extravagant holiday he thought you’d like. He would tell you everything, bare his soul, daring you to accept him.

You always would.

He had never harmed you, in fact he was changing every day.

But The Doctor had rejected him. Given up on him, just as he’d started to get better. She had been just as cruel as you’d even known him to be.

If travelling with The Doctor had shown you anything, it was that the good guys never really won. There was always another thankless risk to take, another bastard who would go unpunished while good people suffered.

It was nice to be on the winning side.

Your conscience could take the hit.

The Doctor was panting as she waited for you to answer, her fury cooling a little. You couldn’t look her in the eye as you shook your head.

“You can’t go back to him,” she told you solemnly, with the self-assuredness of the all-knowing god she played at being. “I can’t let you do that.”

You tried the door again, panicking as she crowded you in, the wood behind you like concrete in its refusal to budge.

“You can’t go back to him,” she insisted, “promise me you won’t. I can’t lose you to him. I can’t.”

“I love him,” you whispered. She was so close; you knew she could hear your voice crystal clear. “He loves me. We’re happy, Doctor.”

“You’re _not!_ He’s tricked you. That necklace, or something. It’s controlling you.”

You were still fumbling the locket with one hand, your thumbnail tracing the opening of it nervously as The Doctor grew more frantic, more stressed. You hadn’t seen her like this with bombs, with evil dictators, or staring down the barrel of a gun.

The Master brought this out in her. Her kryptonite.

You couldn’t feel the same way – he only made you stronger. Made you happier, more yourself.

“It’s not the necklace, Doctor. It’s not anything. My mind is my own. Let me go.”

“No! It’s… let me scan you. Let the TARDIS… I can…”

Her fingers reached for your forehead, her face scrunched up in regret, and you panicked. As her fingertips made contact with your temples you tried to push her away, felt the very beginning push of something entering your mind. You jostled and screamed and tried to break contact, hoping against hope the TARDIS might stop being soundproof for just a second, that your desperation might be enough for The Master to hear you and break the door down behind you, that he might somehow…

You blinked.

Suddenly you were in a different TARDIS, stumbling with the nauseating sensation of teleportation as your knees almost gave out from underneath you. The locket of the necklace was open, broken open by your thumb, with strands of white light evaporating up into the air, vanishing to a wisp in less than a second.

The Doctor was gone. Less than six feet away stood The Master, his hair ruffled as he frantically typed into the TARDIS screens, looking for something.

Or someone.

As you materialised in his peripheral vision he turned clumsily on the spot, knocking his hastily discarded coat off the console as he took in your instantaneous appearance.

With a shocked blink, he stared at you wild-eyed for a second, trying to see if you were hurt. His eyes were rubbed red, his hair messy from fingers raking through it, his sleeves scrunched up his forearms instead of rolled.

You felt a lump in your throat at his worry, his obvious panic at your disappearance. You knew he would have never forgiven himself if something had happened to you.

“I’m fine.”

He nodded, pulled you to him, preceding a hug with a gentle kiss to your forehead.

As he held you against him you snaked your arms around his waist. Your breathing levelled out against the softness of his body, and as your heart rates slowed

“I am so glad that worked,” he breathed. “What happened?”

“The Doctor,” you admitted, the words reluctant to leave your mouth.

You expected anger, blind rage, a flurry of activity as he insisted on tracking her down, the pendant to be pulled from your neck so he could track its original location before it had brought you safely back to him.

Instead his forehead fell heavily to your shoulder, his own shoulders slumping and his breath leaving him in a heavy sigh. For a moment the pair of you just stood, taking in the comforting mumble of his own TARDIS’ consciousness, happy to simply be sharing the same physical space again.

The Doctor’s words were already leaving your mind, the seed of doubt she’d tried to plant easily plucked from it’s place and discarded. This was your home. The Master’s reaction only confirmed it.

His whisper was so quiet you barely heard it, one of your hands rubbing his back in comfort.

“And you still came back to me.”


End file.
